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<h1 align='right'><a name='BASICS'><img src="2.gif" align="right"
hspace="10" width="100" height="100" alt="2"></a>Getting Started
with Mini-XML</h1>

<p>This chapter describes how to write programs that use Mini-XML to
access data in an XML file. Mini-XML provides the following
functionality:</p>

<ul>

	<li>Functions for creating and managing XML documents
	in memory.</li>

	<li>Reading of UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoded XML files and
	strings.</li>

	<li>Writing of UTF-8 encoded XML files and strings.</li>

	<li>Support for arbitrary element names, attributes, and
	attribute values with no preset limits, just available
	memory.</li>

	<li>Support for integer, real, opaque ("cdata"), and text
	data types in "leaf" nodes.</li>

	<li>"Find", "index", and "walk" functions for easily
	accessing data in an XML document.</li>

</ul>

<p>Mini-XML doesn't do validation or other types of processing
on the data based upon schema files or other sources of
definition information, nor does it support character entities
other than those required by the XML specification.</p>


<h2>The Basics</h2>

<p>Mini-XML provides a single header file which you include:</p>

<pre>
    #include &lt;mxml.h&gt;
</pre>

<p>The Mini-XML library is included with your program using the
<kbd>-lmxml</kbd> option:</p>

<pre>
    <kbd>gcc -o myprogram myprogram.c -lmxml ENTER</kbd>
</pre>

<p>If you have the <tt>pkg-config(1)</tt> software installed,
you can use it to determine the proper compiler and linker options
for your installation:</p>

<pre>
    <kbd>pkg-config --cflags mxml ENTER</kbd>
    <kbd>pkg-config --libs mxml ENTER</kbd>
</pre>

<h2>Nodes</h2>

<p>Every piece of information in an XML file (elements, text,
numbers) is stored in memory in "nodes". Nodes are defined by
the <a
href='#mxml_node_t'><tt>mxml_node_t</tt></a>
structure. The <a
href='#mxml_type_t'><tt>type</tt></a> member
defines the node type (element, integer, opaque, real, or text)
which determines which value you want to look at in the <a
href='#mxml_value_t'><tt>value</tt></a> union.</p>

<!-- NEED 10 -->
<center><table width="80%" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Mini-XML Node Value Members">
<caption align="bottom"><i>Table 2-1: Mini-XML Node Value Members</i></caption>
<tr bgcolor="#cccccc">
	<th>Value</th>
	<th>Type</th>
	<th>Node member</th>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td>Custom</td>
	<td><tt>void *</tt></td>
	<td><tt>node-&gt;value.custom.data</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td>Element</td>
	<td><tt>char *</tt></td>
	<td><tt>node-&gt;value.element.name</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td>Integer</td>
	<td><tt>int</tt></td>
	<td><tt>node-&gt;value.integer</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td>Opaque (string)</td>
	<td><tt>char *</tt></td>
	<td><tt>node-&gt;value.opaque</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td>Real</td>
	<td><tt>double</tt></td>
	<td><tt>node-&gt;value.real</tt></td>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td>Text</td>
	<td><tt>char *</tt></td>
	<td><tt>node-&gt;value.text.string</tt></td>
</tr>
</table></center>

<p>Each node also has a <tt>user_data</tt> member which allows you
to associate application-specific data with each node as needed.</p>

<p>New nodes are created using the <a
href='#mxmlNewElement'><tt>mxmlNewElement</tt></a>, <a
href='#mxmlNewInteger'><tt>mxmlNewInteger</tt></a>, <a
href='#mxmlNewOpaque'><tt>mxmlNewOpaque</tt></a>, <a
href='#mxmlNewReal'><tt>mxmlNewReal</tt></a>, <a
href='#mxmlNewText'><tt>mxmlNewText</tt></a> <a
href='#mxmlNewTextf'><tt>mxmlNewTextf</tt></a> <a
href='#mxmlNewXML'><tt>mxmlNewXML</tt></a> functions. Only
elements can have child nodes, and the top node must be an element,
usually the <tt>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;</tt> node created by
<tt>mxmlNewXML()</tt>.</p>

<p>Nodes have pointers to the node above (<tt>parent</tt>), below
(<tt>child</tt>), left (<tt>prev</tt>), and  right (<tt>next</tt>)
of the current node. If you have an XML file like the following:</p>

<pre>
    &lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
    &lt;data&gt;
        &lt;node&gt;val1&lt;/node&gt;
        &lt;node&gt;val2&lt;/node&gt;
        &lt;node&gt;val3&lt;/node&gt;
        &lt;group&gt;
            &lt;node&gt;val4&lt;/node&gt;
            &lt;node&gt;val5&lt;/node&gt;
            &lt;node&gt;val6&lt;/node&gt;
        &lt;/group&gt;
        &lt;node&gt;val7&lt;/node&gt;
        &lt;node&gt;val8&lt;/node&gt;
    &lt;/data&gt;
</pre>

<p>the node tree for the file would look like the following in
memory:</p>

<pre>
    ?xml
      |
    data
      |
    node - node - node - group - node - node
      |      |      |      |       |      |
    val1   val2   val3     |     val7   val8
                           |
                         node - node - node
                           |      |      |
                         val4   val5   val6
</pre>

<p>where "-" is a pointer to the next node and "|" is a pointer
to the first child node.</p>

<p>Once you are done with the XML data, use the <a
href='#mxmlDelete'><tt>mxmlDelete</tt></a> function to recursively
free the memory that is used for a particular node or the entire
tree:</p>

<pre>
    mxmlDelete(tree);
</pre>

<!-- NEW PAGE -->
<h2>Creating XML Documents</h2>

<p>You can create and update XML documents in memory using the
various <tt>mxmlNew</tt> functions. The following code will
create the XML document described in the previous section:</p>

<pre>
    mxml_node_t *xml;    /* &lt;?xml ... ?&gt; */
    mxml_node_t *data;   /* &lt;data&gt; */
    mxml_node_t *node;   /* &lt;node&gt; */
    mxml_node_t *group;  /* &lt;group&gt; */

    xml = mxmlNewXML("1.0");

    data = mxmlNewElement(xml, "data");

        node = mxmlNewElement(data, "node");
        mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val1");
        node = mxmlNewElement(data, "node");
        mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val2");
        node = mxmlNewElement(data, "node");
        mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val3");

        group = mxmlNewElement(data, "group");

            node = mxmlNewElement(group, "node");
            mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val4");
            node = mxmlNewElement(group, "node");
            mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val5");
            node = mxmlNewElement(group, "node");
            mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val6");

        node = mxmlNewElement(data, "node");
        mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val7");
        node = mxmlNewElement(data, "node");
        mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val8");
</pre>

<p>We start by creating the <tt>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;</tt>
node common to all XML files using the <a
href="#mxmlNewXML"><tt>mxmlNewXML</tt></a> function:</p>

<pre>
    xml = mxmlNewXML("1.0");
</pre>

<p>We then create the <tt>&lt;data&gt;</tt> node used for this
document using the <a
href="#mxmlNewElement"><tt>mxmlNewElement</tt></a> function. The
first argument specifies the parent node (<tt>xml</tt>) while the
second specifies the element name (<tt>data</tt>):</p>

<pre>
    data = mxmlNewElement(xml, "data");
</pre>

<p>Each <tt>&lt;node&gt;...&lt;/node&gt;</tt> in the file is
created using the <tt>mxmlNewElement</tt> and <a
href="#mxmlNewText"><tt>mxmlNewText</tt></a> functions. The first
argument of <tt>mxmlNewText</tt> specifies the parent node
(<tt>node</tt>). The second argument specifies whether whitespace
appears before the text - 0 or false in this case. The last
argument specifies the actual text to add:</p>

<pre>
    node = mxmlNewElement(data, "node");
    mxmlNewText(node, 0, "val1");
</pre>

<p>The resulting in-memory XML document can then be saved or
processed just like one loaded from disk or a string.</p>

<!-- NEW PAGE -->
<h2>Loading XML</h2>

<p>You load an XML file using the <a
href='#mxmlLoadFile'><tt>mxmlLoadFile</tt></a>
function:</p>

<pre>
    FILE *fp;
    mxml_node_t *tree;

    fp = fopen("filename.xml", "r");
    tree = mxmlLoadFile(NULL, fp,
                        MXML_TEXT_CALLBACK);
    fclose(fp);
</pre>

<p>The first argument specifies an existing XML parent node, if
any. Normally you will pass <tt>NULL</tt> for this argument
unless you are combining multiple XML sources. The XML file must
contain a complete XML document including the <tt>?xml</tt>
element if the parent node is <tt>NULL</tt>.</p>

<p>The second argument specifies the stdio file to read from, as
opened by <tt>fopen()</tt> or <tt>popen()</tt>. You can also use
<tt>stdin</tt> if you are implementing an XML filter
program.</p>

<p>The third argument specifies a callback function which returns
the value type of the immediate children for a new element node:
<tt>MXML_CUSTOM</tt>, <tt>MXML_IGNORE</tt>,
<tt>MXML_INTEGER</tt>, <tt>MXML_OPAQUE</tt>, <tt>MXML_REAL</tt>,
or <tt>MXML_TEXT</tt>. Load callbacks are described in detail in
<a href='#LOAD_CALLBACKS'>Chapter 3</a>. The example code uses
the <tt>MXML_TEXT_CALLBACK</tt> constant which specifies that all
data nodes in the document contain whitespace-separated text
values. Other standard callbacks include
<tt>MXML_IGNORE_CALLBACK</tt>, <tt>MXML_INTEGER_CALLBACK</tt>,
<tt>MXML_OPAQUE_CALLBACK</tt>, and 
<tt>MXML_REAL_CALLBACK</tt>.</p>

<p>The <a href='#mxmlLoadString'><tt>mxmlLoadString</tt></a>
function loads XML node trees from a string:</p>

<!-- NEED 10 -->
<pre>
    char buffer[8192];
    mxml_node_t *tree;

    ...
    tree = mxmlLoadString(NULL, buffer,
                          MXML_TEXT_CALLBACK);
</pre>

<p>The first and third arguments are the same as used for
<tt>mxmlLoadFile()</tt>. The second argument specifies the
string or character buffer to load and must be a complete XML
document including the <tt>?xml</tt> element if the parent node
is <tt>NULL</tt>.</p>


<!-- NEW PAGE -->
<h2>Saving XML</h2>

<p>You save an XML file using the <a
href='#mxmlSaveFile'><tt>mxmlSaveFile</tt></a> function:</p>

<pre>
    FILE *fp;
    mxml_node_t *tree;

    fp = fopen("filename.xml", "w");
    mxmlSaveFile(tree, fp, MXML_NO_CALLBACK);
    fclose(fp);
</pre>

<p>The first argument is the XML node tree to save. It should
normally be a pointer to the top-level <tt>?xml</tt> node in
your XML document.</p>

<p>The second argument is the stdio file to write to, as opened
by <tt>fopen()</tt> or <tt>popen()</tt>. You can also use
<tt>stdout</tt> if you are implementing an XML filter
program.</p>

<p>The third argument is the whitespace callback to use when
saving the file. Whitespace callbacks are covered in detail in <a
href='SAVE_CALLBACKS'>Chapter 3</a>. The previous example code
uses the <tt>MXML_NO_CALLBACK</tt> constant to specify that no
special whitespace handling is required.</p>

<p>The <a
href='#mxmlSaveAllocString'><tt>mxmlSaveAllocString</tt></a>,
and <a href='#mxmlSaveString'><tt>mxmlSaveString</tt></a>
functions save XML node trees to strings:</p>

<pre>
    char buffer[8192];
    char *ptr;
    mxml_node_t *tree;

    ...
    mxmlSaveString(tree, buffer, sizeof(buffer),
                   MXML_NO_CALLBACK);

    ...
    ptr = mxmlSaveAllocString(tree, MXML_NO_CALLBACK);
</pre>

<p>The first and last arguments are the same as used for
<tt>mxmlSaveFile()</tt>. The <tt>mxmlSaveString</tt> function
takes pointer and size arguments for saving the XML document to
a fixed-size buffer, while <tt>mxmlSaveAllocString()</tt>
returns a string buffer that was allocated using
<tt>malloc()</tt>.</p>

<h3>Controlling Line Wrapping</h3>

<p>When saving XML documents, Mini-XML normally wraps output
lines at column 75 so that the text is readable in terminal
windows. The <a
href='#mxmlSetWrapMargin'><tt>mxmlSetWrapMargin</tt></a> function
overrides the default wrap margin:</p>

<pre>
    /* Set the margin to 132 columns */
    mxmlSetWrapMargin(132);

    /* Disable wrapping */
    mxmlSetWrapMargin(0);
</pre>


<!-- NEW PAGE-->
<h2>Finding and Iterating Nodes</h2>

<p>The <a
href='#mxmlWalkPrev'><tt>mxmlWalkPrev</tt></a>
and <a
href='#mxmlWalkNext'><tt>mxmlWalkNext</tt></a>functions
can be used to iterate through the XML node tree:</p>

<pre>
    mxml_node_t *node;
    
    node = mxmlWalkPrev(current, tree,
                        MXML_DESCEND);

    node = mxmlWalkNext(current, tree,
                        MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>

<p>In addition, you can find a named element/node using the <a
href='#mxmlFindElement'><tt>mxmlFindElement</tt></a>
function:</p>

<pre>
    mxml_node_t *node;
    
    node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "name",
                           "attr", "value",
                           MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>

<p>The <tt>name</tt>, <tt>attr</tt>, and <tt>value</tt>
arguments can be passed as <tt>NULL</tt> to act as wildcards,
e.g.:</p>

<!-- NEED 4 -->
<pre>
    /* Find the first "a" element */
    node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "a",
                           NULL, NULL,
                           MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>
<!-- NEED 5 -->
<pre>
    /* Find the first "a" element with "href"
       attribute */
    node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "a",
                           "href", NULL,
                           MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>
<!-- NEED 6 -->
<pre>
    /* Find the first "a" element with "href"
       to a URL */
    node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, "a",
                           "href",
                           "http://www.easysw.com/",
                           MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>
<!-- NEED 5 -->
<pre>
    /* Find the first element with a "src"
       attribute */
    node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, NULL,
                           "src", NULL,
                           MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>
<!-- NEED 5 -->
<pre>
    /* Find the first element with a "src"
       = "foo.jpg" */
    node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree, NULL,
                           "src", "foo.jpg",
                           MXML_DESCEND);
</pre>

<p>You can also iterate with the same function:</p>

<pre>
    mxml_node_t *node;

    for (node = mxmlFindElement(tree, tree,
                                "name",
                                NULL, NULL,
                                MXML_DESCEND);
         node != NULL;
         node = mxmlFindElement(node, tree,
                                "name",
                                NULL, NULL,
                                MXML_DESCEND))
    {
      ... do something ...
    }
</pre>

<!-- NEED 10 -->
<p>The <tt>MXML_DESCEND</tt> argument can actually be one of
three constants:</p>

<ul>

	<li><tt>MXML_NO_DESCEND</tt> means to not to look at any
	child nodes in the element hierarchy, just look at
	siblings at the same level or parent nodes until the top
	node or top-of-tree is reached.

        <p>The previous node from "group" would be the "node"
        element to the left, while the next node from "group" would
        be the "node" element to the right.<br><br></p></li>

        <li><tt>MXML_DESCEND_FIRST</tt> means that it is OK to
        descend to the first child of a node, but not to descend
        further when searching. You'll normally use this when
        iterating through direct children of a parent node, e.g. all
        of the "node" and "group" elements under the "?xml" parent
        node in the example above.

        <p>This mode is only applicable to the search function; the
        walk functions treat this as <tt>MXML_DESCEND</tt> since
        every call is a first time.<br><br></p></li>

        <li><tt>MXML_DESCEND</tt> means to keep descending until
        you hit the bottom of the tree. The previous node from
        "group" would be the "val3" node and the next node would
        be the first node element under "group".

        <p>If you were to walk from the root node "?xml" to the end
        of the tree with <tt>mxmlWalkNext()</tt>, the order would
        be:</p>

        <p><tt>?xml data node val1 node val2 node val3 group node
        val4 node val5 node val6 node val7 node val8</tt></p>

	<p>If you started at "val8" and walked using
	<tt>mxmlWalkPrev()</tt>, the order would be reversed,
	ending at "?xml".</p></li>

</ul>

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